I'm buying my daughter an ATV3 for Xmas and am worried about her computer to support it. She currently has an old Windows PC running over wireless G. Will that be a problem? Should I put a N network card in? Wired isn't an option.

Would I be better off getting her an old laptop and plugging it in to her router to use just for iTunes? What would be the min specs that would be trouble free for her.

I use a Windows XP Netbook, Intel Atom 1.6Ghz and it sits there all day and works just fine.

All the PC does is push the file to the ATV, it doesn't actually decode the video - thats done by the ATV.

More important is your network is up to speed. 54G wireless is fine if no-one else is using the network but you might run into issues if other people are using video.

I have a netgear WNDR router (name escapes me at work) which works on N/G. It's configured to run wirelss N on 300Mbs @ 5Ghz which I only use for A/V streaming, all other net traffic on 2.4Ghz G @ 54Mbs.

Interestingly I think content doesn't continually stream to ATV's. The entire files is sent and stored on the HDD. Typically I get a 2-3minute 'burst' of data then no more traffic until I select the next TV show or movie to watch. Can't speak for ATV 2 and 3 though as I still use ATV 1.